Episode 162 - Wild Garden

I love the outdoors and I love nature. I’m fortunate enough to have a garden in my current house. What I don’t have is much time to manage it. It’s quite a plain garden, an area of decking and then a lawn, an empty rectangle. I would love to have the sort of garden that is full of flowers and birds and life, but that’s not really my garden. There are no flowers or trees planted in my garden except a tiny privet and some unrecognisable plant that died a long time ago, and I have no time to change anything about it.

Yet even so, there are flowers in my garden; there are daisies and dandelions that grow in my lawn and around the edges of my lawn are an array of different flowers which have planted themselves. Weeds that I’m almost certain that I’m supposed to have gotten ridden of by the rules of being an adult or something like that, but I didn’t have the heart (or time or inclination) to get rid of them because the small sense of vitality that they give to my garden brings me joy. So I have let them grow, but there is still little sense of life in my garden, at least until I looked out of my kitchen window this morning. When I did, I saw that my garden was full of literally dozens of sparrows and goldfinches. The big thistle plants which had magically come into being with no interference from me have now gone to seed and the birds were having a feast. I stood and marvelled at both how good God’s creation was, and His abundant blessing to me which not only came without my input but also because of my lack of input! Such an effortless blessing which I would have lost if I had worked hard as I thought I was supposed to.

I stared and wonder about my life, about how many things in my life that I considered weeds that I spent so much time wrestling with trying to get rid of so that I could have a pristine lawn were actually God’s blessings that I just needed to allow to grow to become fruitful. Anxieties that I try to hide from that could become new visions of great opportunities. Guilt which I try to run from which could become maturing character and forgiveness. Broken heartedness which I pretend doesn’t exist which could become healing and a greater compassion and capacity to love. A difficult colleague I try to avoid which could become a great friendship. A needy friend I don’t have time for who might fulfil needs I don’t even realise I have. The list could go on. May my life become a garden overrun by God’s weeds, because they are far greater than the most perfectly manicured lawn that I could ever create.